Using the AdSense Help Community

Hi publishers!  It's been a really long time since I've needed to try and explain AdSense help pages.  Lately, however, the AdSense forum is overflowing with questions that we can't answer.  

One of the reasons is because people use the AdSense English language community and write in their own language. For the majority of languages, Google Translate is your friend! You can type your question into Google Translate and ask it to be translated to English.  Then post the English version when asking for help. 

You'll probably get help (or at least an answer) faster than if you post in a non-English language in the English help group.

Some of the forum PEs (that stands for Product Expert which is what Google call us these days) might answer questions posted in other languages, but not all devices have on-page translation, so a lot of non-English questions might go unanswered. I try to answer as many of them as I can, but not all languages translate into questions that make sense, and if we can't figure out what help the person is asking for, we can't answer the question.

Myself, I use a separately installed translator in my browser, which allows me to highlight  the text and get an immediate translation. That allows me to answer non-English questions. The problem with that is simple ... not all languages can be translated that way.

If I'm using my desktop, I can easily access translation tools without leaving the help forum. If I'm using a tablet or my husband's chromebook, I cannot. I don't have a mobile phone, but I'm guessing some of those might not have on-board browser translators either. It would depend on the device.

Just as an example of translation issues for some of us - my installed translator will not translate something called "Hinglish".  To begin with,  hinglish isn't a recognized language everywhere. Hindi is a recognized language, and so is English. Writing Hindi in latin text doesn't make it a different language ... it just makes it a language that some translation tools can't recognize.

It's best if you use standardized world languages that can be easily translated. It might take a while longer to get an answer in non-English languages, but most  of us try to answer those that can be translated.

There are also AdSense communities in other languages that you can post to. You don't have to use the English forum. In fact, Google asks you to use the language of the forum you go to for help:

 Respect the language of the forum

We have forums in 15 languages (English, Spanish, Russian, French, German, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, Korean, Portuguese, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Arabic). Please post messages in the language of the forum.

 (AdSense Community Guidelines)

The language barrier is only one of the issues that make it harder to get your problems resolved, but it is one that we see almost every day. 

posted by J.Gracey Stinson